According to the information released by the South China Sea Strategic Situational Awareness, in the waters south of China's Paracel Islands. Spot the trail of an American Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. One of the details deserves attention.
For some time, under the guise of freedom of navigation, the US military has repeatedly tried to force the territorial waters of islands in the South China Sea, but they have failed. The mighty Chinese navy is fully capable of keeping its opponents out of China's territorial waters. Therefore, although the US destroyer was found in the Paracel Islands this time, the PLA was not at all worried about the possible forced invasion of territorial waters by the US military.
But one of those details deserves to be explored in depth. The satellite data obtained by the South China Sea Strategic Situational Awareness Platform comes from the Sentinel 2 reconnaissance satellite of the European Aviation Agency. There will certainly be friends who will be puzzled, because logically speaking, China is the second largest country in the world after the United States, why should it obtain such important and sensitive information through third-party channels. Can't Chinese satellites detect the movements of U.S. warships? Obviously, the answer is not.
Because before that, the Chinese side has repeatedly released the traces of the US aircraft carrier formation photographed by Chinese optical reconnaissance satellites. So it is clear that it is not a question of China's satellite strength, but another consideration.
According to the analysis, the reason why the Chinese side quoted the data of the ESA Sentinel satellite is likely to block the mouth of the United States in the first place. China has a full range of reconnaissance satellites and is certainly fully capable of tracking and monitoring the activities of all U.S. warships in the South China Sea. But in this way, the US side and the US media will take the opportunity to hype up the so-called China threat theory.
Now, it just so happens that ESA's Sentinel 2 reconnaissance satellite provides open source information, which the Chinese side directly adopts, leaving the United States speechless. From another perspective. China's satellite reconnaissance system requires a high degree of confidentiality, and its status and results should not be easily disclosed unless necessary.
Take, for example, the Beijing 3 satellite, which was launched six months ago. The satellite belongs to the high-precision optical imaging satellite, with a large scanning range, fast imaging speed characteristics, civilian imaging accuracy can reach 0.5 meters, military grade is said to reach 0.1 meters. Half a year after the launch, the Beijing No. 3 satellite recently announced a result, which took only 42 seconds to complete the scanning of key areas of the United States, the scanning width is 4 times that of similar foreign satellites, and the work efficiency is twice as high.
Therefore, it can be seen that China does not lack advanced satellites, but only selectively announces them to the outside world. And another feature of the Chinese side is that what is announced is definitely not the most advanced. Therefore, everyone should have firm confidence in China's satellite system. As the world's only long-range anti-aircraft carrier system that can be applied, the optical satellite and synthetic aperture radar satellite developed by China are the clairvoyance of the system.
It is no exaggeration to say that within the scope of the first island chain, no large ship can only hide from these sharp eyes. Not only that, with the release of Beijing-3 technical achievements, it means that not only in the first island chain or in the South China Sea, China's reconnaissance scope can be extended to anywhere in the world, of course, including the United States mainland.